The conventional approach of cleaning and shining the shoes are generally to use a brush to remove the dust and dirt from the shoes surface, then to spread the shoe cream on the shoe surface by using the brush or sponge spreader, and finally to buff the shoes to luster by using some sort of soft substance such as a piece of cloth. Throughout the process, a number of different kinds of appliances and materials have to be used. It is not a neat and clean chore for people to do. It is particularly bothersome to bring those things around during traveling which become very popular to many people nowadays.
In order to save time and effort on shoe cleaning and polishing, some kind of devices have been produced and marketed. However they are far from perfect as yet. On the simple handy devices, mostly they can only apply shoe cream and/or provide a means to polish the shoe, but cannot perform all the functions required through one unit. Different and separate appliances and materials are still needed to clean and polish one pair of shoes. On the more complicate devices, such as some with electric motor as driving power, they may perform more functions, but they become more bulky and more expensive, and sometime even not so flexible and convenient as the conventional manual method.
Therefore to use different and separate appliances at different stages to clean and polish the shoes is still the most widely used method, even though it is a chore not very neat and clean.